If it's not open it's broken.

Where to Go if You Suspect a Network Outage

After yesterday’s Freedom Mobile outage I thought it might be useful to provide some tips for where to go if you suspect that your carrier’s mobile network is down.

When I realized that I couldn’t send or receive text messages my first thought was that it must be a billing issue; because of this I wasted almost half an hour on hold with Freedom (using a SIP line) and trying to log into my account on their site. Here’s how I eventually found out what was really going on:

1) Howard Forums. This was the first place I went (obviously), but there weren’t yet any threads suggesting an outage. I would have started one myself but I was still thinking at this point that I had forgotten to pay my bill and my service was suspended.

2) Social media. Confirming Freedom’s network issues was as easy as entering #freedommobile on Twitter. If your city or town has a subreddit, that might be a good place to look, too; unfortunately my own query on r/Toronto quickly devolved into an FM-bashing session, which of course would never happen here. 🙄

3) Downdetector. This is a new one for me. By simply Googling “is Freedom Mobile down?” I was directed to a site called Canadian Outages, where you can actually search for carrier outages by city. And if you’re so inclined, you can download their Android or iOS app, and/or their plugin for Amazon Alexa. They even have a Twitter feed for outages across various networks and services—one each for Canada and the USA.

Hopefully no one reading this will ever experience another carrier outage. But in case you do, now you know where you can go to confirm it.